Cinematheque Blog

Sinatra classic THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, and pre-film "garden party," launch JazzFilmFest on Saturday Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak star in Otto Preminger's jazz-infused 1955 drama THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, about a drummer and ex-addict who licks his heroin habit in prison but struggles to stay clean on the outside. The movie's focus on drug addiction (a taboo subject in 1955) caused the film to be denied a seal of approval by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Elmer Bernstein composed the famous music. See this classic in a restored 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive when it opens our 10-film JazzFilmFest on Saturday at 6:50 pm. Arrive early and enjoy live jazz and refreshments in the Cleveland Institute of Art's outside courtyard as we host a "garden party" from 5:30 to 6:45 pm on Saturday. (Musicians appear courtesy of the Tri-C JazzFest.) Here's the film's original theatrical trailer (which doesn't even mention the movie's subject!).

Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli try to "make it there" in Martin Scorsese's NEW YORK, NEW YORK Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli star in Martin Scorsese's stylish salute to classic Hollywood musicals NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Made between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, this underrated 1977 epic charts the relationship between a frustrated sax player and a brassy singer during the post-WWII big band era. On Saturday and Sunday we will show a 35mm color print of the restored version of this film, which includes the complete Kander & Ebb song "Happy Endings." Watch the music-filled original trailer here.

Elijah Wood and John Cusack star in GRAND PIANO, a highly stylized new Hitchcockian/De Palmaesque thriller from Spanish director Eugenio Mira. Wood plays a young concert pianist, just getting over a debilitating bout of stage fright, who discovers a threatening note written on his sheet music ("play a wrong note and you die") just before a performance. The fast-rising writer and director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench) penned the movie, which Rolling Stone calls "a pulse-pounding experiment in terror." Watch the trailer and then queue up to see the feature on Saturday or Sunday.

The film that French director Alain Guiraudie made before Stranger by the Lake (shown last weekend) was “the revelation of Lincoln Center’s recent Guiraudie retrospective,” according to the Anthology Film Archives. (Anthology's April-June program book also calls this movie “one of the greatest films in recent memory.”) THE KING OF ESCAPE is an outlandish sex farce in which an obese, gay, rural tractor salesman becomes the unlikely love object of his boss’s teenage daughter. They run away together, setting off a chain of bizarre events. Film Comment calls The King of Escape “Guiraudie’s most purely enjoyable film.” No one under 18 will be admitted when we show it in a 35mm print from France on Sunday at 6:45 pm. Print courtesy of Institut Français, Paris. Watch the trailer here.

Stephen Chow's new action comedy is strange and entertaining JOURNEY TO THE WEST, the new action comedy from Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), is a spectacular, special-effects-laden fantasy based on a 16th-century classic of Chinese literature. The film.tells of an aspiring demon hunter who tries to protect a village from all manner of monsters—be they pig, monkey, or giant fish! Here's the outlandish trailer for this over-the-top action comedy that makes its East Side Cleveland theatrical premiere on Thursday and Friday.

Trippy 17th-century drama A FIELD IN ENGLAND is pure cinema The fourth feature by fast-rising filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers) is an hallucinatory historical drama set in civil war-torn 17th-century England. A FIELD IN ENGLAND is a mash-up of Witchfinder General, Winstanley, Monty Python, and David Lynch that tells of four soldiers and an apprentice alchemist/conjurer who enlists them to scour a meadow for buried treasure. Time Out London calls the film "breathtakingly lovely and genuinely unsettling…There’s a ten-minute sequence of pure psychedelic freefall and freakout which is one of the most captivating, hypnotic and beautiful things you’ll ever see on a cinema screen..We can’t stress enough how important it is to catch this one on the big screen.” Adults can see A Field in England on the big screen on Thursday or Friday. Print this email and present it at the box office and pay only $7 ($6 if you're a Cinematheque member). It's our Deal of the Week! (Limit two discount admissions per print-out) Here's the trailer.

This Week:

Thu., May 8, at 6:45pmFri., May 9, at 9:20pmStephen Chow'saction comedy fantasyJOURNEY TO THE WEST

Thu., May 8, at 8:55pmFri., May 9, at 7:30pmBen Wheatley'spsychedelic period pieceA FIELD IN ENGLAND

Sat., May 10, at 5:00pmSun., May 11, at 8:40pmElijah Wood, John Cusackin musical thrillerGRAND PIANO

JazzFilmFestSat., May 10, at 9:10pmSun., May 11, at 3:15pmRobert De Niro &Liza Minnelli inMartin Scorsese'sNEW YORK, NEW YORK

Sun., May 11, at 6:45pmAlain Guiraudie'sFrench sex farceTHE KING OF ESCAPE

Next Week:

Thu., May 15, at 6:45pmFri., May 16, at 7:00pmWADJDA

Thu., May 15, at 8:45pmSun., May 18, at 7:50pmNARCO CULTURA

A Special Event!Filmmaker Tom Jarmusch in Person!Fri., May 16, at 9:00pmSOMETIMES CITY

JazzFilmFestSat., May 17, at 5:15pmSun., May 18, at 4:30pmA GREAT DAY IN HARLEMPreceded at showtime by the 10-min. short "A Great Day in Cleveland: Behind the Scenes," produced by Cuyahoga Community College for Tri-C JazzFest's 35th anniversary